Is There a Doctor in the Quadrant?
by Phantazm
Summary: Ten. Daleks. Vader. Oh, yeah...!
1. Is There a Doctor in the Quadrant?

_Is There a Doctor in the Quadrant?_

With a rhythmic series of wheezing, grinding thumps, the blue booth phased into reality again, its time-displacement engine falling silent as the flashing light on the booth's roof shut off. Inside the construct, a lone occupant frowned worriedly at the few displays still lit.

The machine's available power reserves stood barely at eight percent, hardly enough to keep life support running, much less to reenter timeshift. Or spatial relocation. Or electrocute a Grandabulan swamp gnat if it hit a live wire, for that matter. The slender man ran a hand through his thick, dark hair as he exhaled gustily. His neatly-tailored suit was pressed but showed a few rumples—his exit from realspace had been somewhat hurried, after all—and was quite well set off by his bright orange, rubber-toed sneakers.

"Well, nothing for it but to open a window and take a look about," he murmured to himself. "Open sesame, old girl."

And with his hands jammed firmly in the pockets of his suit jacket, the Doctor pirouetted about to peer into the viewer. To hear his voice, an observer would have sworn that the Doctor was as unconcerned as could be, but in actuality, he was quite concerned, bordering on "agitated" and within eyesight of "frightened." The last reliable readings indicated that somehow, the convergence of multiple beams of energy of different types upon his ship at the same time he engaged the time-space transference, coupled with some odd, alien energy surge, had caused the TARDIS to "fall through" some kind of interdimensional rift. Again.

"Oh, yes, and let's not forget how that turned out," the Doctor mumbled to himself, eyebrows raised and lips pursed as he eyed the screen. "Cybermen gadding about between two Earths, Daleks vaporizing everything they saw. Who knows what I've stumbled into this time?"

The TARDIS' scan of the immediate area indicated a breathable atmosphere, gravitational acceleration approximately one tenth greater than Earth standard, and a lot of metal. Metal walls, metal floors, metal ceilings, metal spacecraft. Metal. Everywhere. Hopefully it precluded attacks by hostile vegetation, but that little bonus was negated by the possibility of attacks by technologically-minded (read "armed") life forms.

But that was of a much lesser concern now than the wound ripped in the boundary between the Doctor's universe and this one, wherever it was. It was also of a lesser concern than the fact that at the time of his interdimensional kerfuffle, he was being pursued by exceptionally hostile, heavily armed, and quite irritated beings who wanted nothing more or less than his head removed from his body. If they were indeed still pursuing him, then the risk that they would pour through this rift was very real, and so was the threat that the contact between the universes would cause the collapse…of everything.

"First, to find out where and when I am. Luckily, I already know Who and what I am. Two out of five is not bad at all, is it?" He turned his gaze back to the TARDIS' control panel and flipped a few switches. Frowning, he reconsidered and returned some of the switches to their original positions, flicking others in their stead. Pausing to make sure all his necessary gear was secure in his pocket, the Doctor opened the door of the TARDIS and sauntered out.

"As far as 'how' I am, if only it stood for 'This Apparatus Remains Dimensionally In Situ,' I would be most happy," he corrected.

-oOo-

The giant starship's onboard sensors registered an unusual power surge within one of the main hangar bays, but the ship's commander registered an unusual hollowness, a distinct lack of power, of substance, of anything. Unseen behind his visor, the man's scarred brows furrowed in thought. Try as he might, he could not pierce the veil of nonexistence that was even now making its way through the hangar bay. It moved slowly, as a man might walk if he were gawking mindlessly at tourist attractions. There was the faintest hint of some kind of consciousness as a mind might have if a brain could be equipped with a cloaking device.

Intruder alarms had not yet sounded, which boded ill for the technicians manning the security consoles, but for the time being, this matter might best be handled in a most personal manner.

Rising from his meditations, his labored breathing loud and ominous in the darkness of his chamber, Lord Darth Vader strode forth to find that which dared intrude upon his ship.

-oOo-

The steady thrumming drone of engines told the Doctor that he was aboard a ship. How large a ship, he could not yet say, but given the number of landing, assault, and sundry craft berthed within it, the vessel would easily be the size of a small city. The clattering of boots on the deck plates rapped out an unsteady rhythm, one which the Doctor translated to mean, "Discretion is the better part of poking one's nose into places unknown."

From a secluded spot behind some shipping containers—metal, of course—he watched some technicians in nondescript coveralls poring over data readers and discussing their next chores. The uniformity of their clothing and presence of some kind of insignia informed the Doctor that he was most likely on some form of military vessel, but despite the human-seeming crewmen, it was of no fleet or planetary body he had seen before. That was saying something, of course; the Doctor, in his various incarnations, had accumulated something over nine hundred years of experience and for the life of him, he could place neither the accents, insignia, or anything he had seen so far. So perhaps it's not just a matter of where I am, but when, d'you think? Well, where and when.

It was a given that he had traversed some kind of dimensional boundary, that much had been confirmed before the TARDIS' systems had shut off. Rather than just a parallel universe, however, this one seemed to be a few generations removed from his. The technology, while accomplishing the same things that machines from his universe could, seemed to go about it in different ways. Something tickled the Doctor's brain. Mildly telepathic, the Time Lord could generally receive thoughts and emotions from others; with physical contact, he could even manipulate another's mind somewhat. But this was different. He frowned and chewed his lip. It felt like another presence was coming closer to him, emanating energy like a torch would shed heat and light. But the opposite, he mused. The approaching entity was radiating cold, darkness…evil. And it was getting closer by the moment.

He drew the sonic screwdriver and twiddled the controls briefly before panning it about the area. When it showed him that what he wanted was (possibly) in a room off in that direction, he made for it as quickly as he could. He wasn't seeking shelter; if he could detect that presence, it stood to reason it could detect him in turn and hiding would just box him into a corner from which he'd most likely not escape. Flight would be a better choice until he could figure out exactly what was happening, and he couldn't move about this titanic ship until he had…

…clothes. The Doctor's face lit up. His sonic screwdriver's sensor functions had led him right to what he needed most. He was in a locker room filled with an array of coveralls, boots, and all sorts of wonderful things he could use to disguise himself.

A grating, raucous alarm began to fill the air, nearly sending the Doctor leaping out of his sneakers. Someone had obviously found the TARDIS. His hand flew to his pocket; sighing in relief, he remembered locking it before he left. At least nobody would gain access to it, and even though they might succeed in relocating it, an outdated Type 40 shaped as an old London police call box shouldn't be all that hard to find.

Grabbing a set of overalls that appeared to be the right size, the Doctor began to shuck his suit just in time for a quartet of white-armored humanoids to burst in on him, rifles aimed at his chest. "Don't move," one of them said through his electronic voicebox.

For a horrifying second, the Doctor thought that he had been confronted by a new iteration of Cybermen, version 3.2 or some such, but he could see faint variations in their movements as they aimed their weapons at him; some aimed higher, some lower, and as they stood there, their weapons moved slightly. They were merely armored humanoids, possibly even humans, rather than cybernetic murder machines. It made him feel ever so slightly more hopeful.

"Oh. Well. Good…" The Doctor looked for a chronometer on the walls before realizing he didn't know how the locals would tell time. "Good day. Or evening. Whichever it is, have a good one."

"Keep your hands up and come with us." Two of the men backed out the door while the other two moved to flank the Doctor. Thus positioned, the Time Lord moved through the door and into the presence of the dark manifestation he had felt earlier.

Somewhat over two meters tall, the black-garbed humanoid looked down at the Doctor. The triangular grille over the man's nose and mouth; the reflective onyx lenses that presumably covered the man's eyes; the augmented breathing…whatever this man was, the Doctor thought, he most likely was a man no longer.

"You are the one who owns that unusual vessel in our hangar bay," the massive form intoned.

The Doctor looked to the side in contemplation, pursed his lips, and bobbed his head in a mixture of thought and affirmation. "Yup." He put on his most disarming smile.

"Why are you here?"

Seeing that his interrogator was not disarmed, the Doctor stowed his smile. "Would you believe I got lost?"

"No."

"Well, neither did I, and once I explain myself, perhaps you'll believe me, too, hm?"

"Doubtful. Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor. Who are you?"

"A doctor. A doctor of what?"

"Oh, it's my turn to guess?" the Doctor exclaimed. "So you're a doctor, too, you say. Let me guess. You're a doctor of music!"

The larger man bristled. "I am not a doctor, nor did I say I was one. The Rebellion sent you. Where is your base?"

"Re—…rebellion? I haven't rebelled against anyone since I got my T—" Best not to say too much, especially to him. "Well, it's been a while, and certainly not against you. How can I rebel against you when I don't even know who you are?"

The Doctor felt waves of rage washing over him, emanating from this psychic black hole that leeched life and light from everything around him. A black-gloved hand raised and clenched itself into a claw. The Time Lord felt a tingling tickle at the sides of his throat, but nothing more.

"Oh, now this is a unique sensation," the Doctor noted. "Is that one of your powers? The ability to inflict tonsillitis on someone? I hate to be the one to inform you, although I really don't because given your attitude, I enjoy telling you this, but you'll have no effect on me. No tonsils. See?" He opened his mouth wide and said, "Aaah" for the Sith Lord's benefit.

Vader withdrew his hand, perplexed and enraged. How could this buffoon be immune to the Force? There was nothing in the man's aura that would hint at any kind of skill with the Force, either as Sith or Jedi or even a Force-sensitive. For that matter, Vader could barely sense him through the Force at all, despite the fact that he could be seen and heard and touched. Whatever this "doctor" was, he was at least an enigma and at most, a dire threat to the Empire. "Take this person to a holding cell and schedule an interrogation as soon as he is there. I would know his secrets."

"Ah, I wouldn't do that, if I were in your place," the Doctor objected as the troopers began to herd him away. "You see, your best bet is to simply allow me to regenerate the power in my ship's systems so I can be safely on my way. Otherwise, there's a very real risk that the rift between your world and mine will widen and much worse than me can come through."

Vader nearly lost his temper and laid hands on the Doctor, but he kept his composure. "You dare threaten the Empire?"

"Me? Threaten something so obviously important as an empire? Although I have been known to topple them on occasion, I would never threaten one," the Doctor said, somehow being both aghast and intimidating at once.

The Dark Lord was close to a dangerous breach of self-control. This infuriating simpleton had the gall to infiltrate the Empire's flagship then insult Vader to his face. Had they been alone, Vader would undoubtedly have drawn his lightsaber and slain the Doctor where he stood, but before the assembled stormtroopers and technicians, he dared not. Yet. Not only would it seem that Vader could be angered to the point of lashing out by someone's idea of a court jester—which would be bad for appearances—but the intruder, this "doctor," just might have information vital to the Empire, such as how the Rebellion had managed to infiltrate the _Executor_'s systems with that blue box.

"But in reality, the threat does not come from me this time. Not yet, anyway. You see, I am fairly certain that I'm here by accident. Well, I'm entirely certain, but I mean to say that the mechanics by which I entered your universe were accidental. Fairly well understood, of course, because I am the Doctor, you see, but the interactions of the forces involved were…"

"Silence!" Vader roared, sending the Doctor back a step in surprise. "You will be interrogated, your ship dismantled, and any secrets you have will be ours. But most of all, you will be silent!"

"Well, if you insist," the Doctor replied, brightening immensely. "Off we go, then. Which way to my cell, please? Is it this way? Close to the galley, I hope? A little tea would be nice." He began walking toward a doorway, hands still in the air, prompting two stormtroopers to intercept him and send him through the right door.

Vader whirled on two technicians. "Begin scans of that blue box in the hangar bay. Report anything you find, no matter how insignificant it may seem. Concentrate on finding a way inside it by whatever means necessary, and from there, download anything and everything that may be in its memory banks. I will know how this intruder boarded my ship!"

-oOo-

Darth Vader had cooled down somewhat by the time he arrived in the Doctor's cell, an interrogation droid hovering nearby. He waved the guards out and the door slid shut, leaving the Sith Lord face to face with the Time Lord.

"Now then," the Doctor said cheerfully, "what would you like to talk about?"

"I will learn what I need to know easily enough," Vader rumbled. "The interrogator will administer the medicines and the questions and you will supply the answers."

The Doctor whipped a pair of plastic framed glasses from his pocket and peered at the hovering black droid, appearing to be nothing but a steel ball with a syringe jutting from it. "Oh, pharmaceutical questioning. Very nasty. And I'm to assume that after you question me, there will be little enough left of me to throw to the vultures, yes?"

"If you are fortunate."

"Pardon me, but 'fortunate' appears to be a relative term."

Mechanically-assisted breathing was the Doctor's only answer.

The Doctor likewise paused. When it was obvious that the Dark Lord was not going to speak, the Doctor leaped into the breach. "This is the part where you wait for your intimidation tactics to wear me down, isn't it? Not going to work, sad to say," he lamented, shaking his head. "I know you've probably heard these lines before, things like, 'I've been from here to there and seen this and that and you can't possibly guess what' and so forth, but in my case, allow me to assure you that it is most definitely true, sir. I have been tortured by Daleks, Cybermen, Vogans, and my very own people on one dark occasion, and in addition to the psychological effects of such a betrayal, the physical travails have proven survivable, though painful.

"Oh, I'm quite certain you'll try your best," the Doctor continued. "You'll apply your electricity, hot wires, psychedelic hallucinogenic unhygienic what-have-yous, and all kinds of mental mayhem. I don't doubt that at all. All in the name of your glorious empire and its ever-expanding conquest, the devouring of all before you and the total disregard of individual liberties, thoughts, hopes, and dreams. Quashed in the feeding frenzy of expansion and domination without a thought as to what you're snuffing out in the process. Feel free to try to add me to the list of the conquered, but understand that although you may add the name 'Doctor' to the roll of the recently deceased, you will never be able to conquer me."

Now Vader did lash out. With one powerful arm, he pinned the Doctor to a wall, his orange sneakers dangling a foot off the deck. "You ramble like some kind of madman…"

"Not 'some' kind. One of the best."

"…but you have still managed to get past not only the _Executor_'s shields but several layers of internal security. How?"

"I have my ways," the Doctor admitted. "But it would be greatly appreciated if you would just understand that it was accidental. You see, a surge of energies, vastly different energies, not all of which I'm certain were native to my universe, conspired with my ship's engines to bring me willy-nilly through the spaces between dimensions to pop up within your rather impressive ship."

Vader let the Doctor hang a moment longer before letting the Time Lord back down with a jarring thump. There was a nugget of truth, or at least identifiable fact, in the intruder's babbling. Not long before Vader had sensed the alien presence, teams of scientists aboard the Imperial flagship had been forced to abort an experiment in a hypothetical method of transporting objects instantly from one space to another. Similar to teleportation in theory, but with the added potential of traveling in time. It was highly probable that the experiment had provided at least one tangible benefit: this alien and his ship, if that blue contraption could be graced with the designation "ship."

"Well. Perhaps I made an impression on that ebony edifice atop your rather impressively broad, cloaked shoulders, hm?"

"Rather than waste my time interrogating you myself, I will put you at the disposal of our engineers," Vader mused, almost distracted. "No doubt you would be of great use to them."

"Oh, no doubt I would be," the Doctor agreed. "If I chose to cooperate. And I don't think I shall. Thank you for asking, even though you didn't."

It seemed for a moment that a mirthless smile touched Vader's face behind the gleaming black faceplate. "I believe you shall. With your puerile meanderings, you have betrayed your weakness. I will not slay you if you refuse to assist me. I will find others to stand in your stead until you agree to cooperate."

The Doctor very nearly spat, "You wouldn't dare," before he realized that this demonic shadow before him most assuredly would dare. "I would advise against that for several reasons. The first reason would be that you would become one of my greatest enemies, and that is not conducive to a prolonged existence. The second would be that the gap between our realities still exists, and much worse than me is poised to follow if I don't get back through it and seal it. Finally, if you so much as twitched funny, I would have you knocked flat of your armored backside before you could say 'twitched funny'."

Vader's hand lashed out again, a crimson rod of blazing energy humming a hair's breadth from the Doctor's neck. "Twitched funny." The Sith Lord's hand never wavered.

"And 'knocked flat of your armored backside,'" the Doctor replied smoothly. His sonic screwdriver was as close to Vader's lightsaber as the blade was to his own neck. Vader had never seen him move. A press of a switch and the lightsaber sputtered and died. "Now, I know the destruction of your favorite toy has likely sent you down the path to a tantrum of Olympian magnitude, but hear me out." This last came as he leaped away from Vader's backhanded swing.

Vader had finally had enough. The Doctor had destroyed his lightsaber and was somehow immune to the effects of the Force, relegating Vader to using hands-on methods. But that suited the Sith Lord well enough. It was not usually his way to be so cold-bloodedly violent, but with the Rebellion, the Emperor, and other, more personal matters weighing on his mind and clamoring for his attention, Vader had become remarkably short of temper.

"You have maybe a half hour left, possibly less, before my TARDIS is recharged. I have a carrier beam linking its systems to my universe so it can draw off enough energy to transit the Void back home. However, I can't say how…"

Intrusion alarms began blaring, the same kind that Vader had ordered sounded when he had left to find the Doctor. Vader went to a wall panel and jabbed a button. "Report."

"Lord Vader, there seem to be multiple incursions similar to the type registered when the initial intruder materialized," said the man on the other side of the intercom. "We can detect them now because the transit experiments are off line. We count twelve intruders, all centered near the hangar bay where that odd box is."

"TARDIS," the Doctor muttered.

"Dispatch security teams to the hangar bay and have their weapons set to kill," Vader ordered. "We can glean their mission objectives from their corpses."

As the black-armored figure whirled to leave the cell, the Doctor was right behind him, scooting out instants before the door closed. "I believe you'll want me along just in case."

"Only as a hostage," Vader retorted, gesturing at two stormtroopers to follow him. Having heard their master's words, the two troopers flanked the Doctor at a safe distance, their fingers on the triggers of their blast rifles. "Who has followed you here? Shock troops? Computer technicians or demolitions experts?"

"Well, all three, if my suspicions are accurate," the Doctor mused. "Excellent guesses."

The Sith Lord stopped and spun to face the Doctor. "Despite your possible worth to me as a source of information, you may well find yourself dead if you prove to be a greater source of irritation. It would behoove you to fall silent until given leave to speak!"

"And it would behoove you, sir, to get it through your tin-plated head that I do not know what is going on here! I am here by accident and I am trying to help solve this problem before it gets any worse, although by now the situation may well be terminal, thanks to your meddling!" Despite the Doctor being about seven inches shorter and much less massive than Vader, he still met the fallen Jedi's gaze without flinching.

"Lord Vader, we have reports of weapons fire in the hangar bays. We have lost several troopers but have apparently inflicted no casualties upon the invaders," a crewman reported over the intercom.

"Link this terminal with the hangar bay monitors," Vader ordered. A warning finger jabbed out at the Doctor. "You will not speak, but you will watch from here."

A screen flickered to life and a slight rasp of static; audio and visual monitors were active. The sounds of blaster fire and the familiar whine of disruptors filled the speakers, and soon all sounds of shooting ceased. The Doctor's stomach turned to ice and his knees weakened at the sounds he heard next.

_"All resistance has been exterminated. The Daleks are supreme. The TARDIS has been located; the Doctor is in the vicinity. All units will monitor the area for the Doctor's presence. All units, search and exterminate. Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!"_


	2. Exterminate!

Exterminate!

The Doctor knew it should not have been possible, but in hindsight, it had merely been improbable. The Daleks had been firing on his TARDIS as he had tried to escape, and with what he had learned so far, this "Empire" had been engaging in some kind of experiment at the exact same instant, or as "same" an instant as can be reckoned across infinite dimensions and timestreams. There had been some kind of resonance set up between these transit experiments, the Daleks' energy weapons, and the TARDIS' own time- and dimension-hopping engines. A rip had been formed between the Doctor's TARDIS and this _Executor_—they had become two opposing poles of a reality-warping energy field—and it had all gone downhill from there.

Vader observed the Doctor's reactions silently. He obviously knew of these creatures, these "Daleks," but they were equally obviously no allies of his. Interesting. Now the Sith Lord was presented with a novel opportunity. The Doctor would accompany him to the hangar bays, and Vader would observe. Either the Daleks would defeat the Doctor or vice versa, but either way, Vader would be poised to reap the rewards. "Come with me," Vader ordered, resuming his trek to the hangar bay. "We will see what these friends of yours want of us."

"They want us dead," the Doctor stated flatly. "I've known them nearly all my life and spent as long trying to defeat them forever."

"It seems your efforts are lacking."

The Doctor snorted. "My efforts are quite Herculean—although I admit they instead seem somewhat Sisyphean—often utilizing the very fabric of space and time and feats of engineering chicanery that have resulted in my being banned from several worlds and one pub in Hertfordshire, and on occasion have resulted in death, both mine and others. However, the Daleks themselves are incredibly resourceful and resilient and as there are currently several million of them and one of me, it will take me just a little while to figure out how to put a permanent stop to them."

Vader seemed darkly amused. "For all your blustering, you say very little. However, I can easily deduce your meaning: you have no idea how to topple their particular empire despite many attempts."

His lips pursed, the Doctor pondered this. "If you absolutely must distill the flower of my prose to its most basic, then yes."

_Then there are more limits to what he knows than I had hoped. He is not the repository of knowledge he purports himself to be. Still, there is much to be gained from both sides of this little conflict_, Vader pondered. Rebel or not, he possesses an unknown technology, as do these new invaders. It would be foolish to let either of them out of my grasp. "Speak to me of these 'Daleks' and what their capabilities are."

"Oh, so now it's speaking, not shushing. It's always that way when they realize they're outclassed."

"Neither I nor the Empire are 'outclassed,'" Vader stated, entering a lift that would take them near the hangar bay. "I wish to be prepared."

The Doctor's gaze lost its focus. "I doubt you can be. The Daleks have laid waste to thousands of star systems, slain countless numbers of sentient life forms, all so they can reign supreme. Their weapons simultaneously irradiate and disrupt the molecules of everything they touch, or they can be set to emit electricity, tachyon beams, plasma, nearly anything. They are armored and shielded, and precious little can penetrate either their chassis or their shields."

"What are they? Organic, cybernetic, sentient energy?"

The Doctor shook himself out of his fugue. "They're organic beings cradled inside robotic conveyances. They're bred from incubators and placed inside a chassis when they're mature enough, and they know only to kill. You cannot negotiate with them, you cannot reason with them. They feel neither fear nor mercy. Entire civilizations—or the last scraps of them—tremble in fear at the very mention of their name."

"Then they are more like me than I guessed," Vader noted, his voice a low rumble. He held his lightsaber out to the Doctor. "I will need this repaired immediately. If they are all that you say, I expect to face them in combat."

What he left unsaid was the nagging worry that he could not feel these Daleks in the Force any more than he could feel the Doctor. Without the Force, Vader could likely not detect their thoughts or intentions, nullifying one of his greatest advantages. In addition, he would be unable to use his Sith powers to injure them if the Doctor's response was any indication. It would relegate his combat to a more mundane, more physical, less certain level. And strangely, it satisfied him.

The Doctor took Vader's weapon from him and reluctantly applied the sonic screwdriver to it. Despite the lightsaber's complexity, it took only a few moments for the Doctor to repair it. He handed it back to Vader but did not let it go. "Use it on anything or anyone other than the Daleks, and I will take it away from you again."

"Should I choose to use it on you, rest assured you will not know it until you feel your head flying free of your shoulders," Vader rumbled, yanking the saber from the Doctor's grip. "What vulnerabilities do these Daleks possess?"

"None, really." The Doctor let Vader's remark pass; it was pointless to bait or debate him. "I've found their weaknesses only by analyzing their tactics. Operational flaws seem to be their only ones."

As the Sith Lord digested this information, the Doctor kept one vital tidbit to himself. During an earlier encounter, one in which the Daleks had emerged through the Void, he had managed to reopen the rift through which they had emerged. The Void's natural attraction to its own radioactive particles, particles which had saturated the Daleks during their transit, had sucked them all back into the trackless, lifeless Void. He intended to do the same here if only he could return to his TARDIS.

For now, for the last few minutes he had before the lift disgorged them into a nest of Daleks—although twelve was more a gaggle than a nest—the Doctor analyzed his antagonistic ally. The black-clad human was a mystery. His limbs from the knees and elbows outward moved like cybernetic constructs, like a Cyberman might, but his shoulders and hips, his head and torso, moved like a man. This "Lord Vader" was obviously some sort of cyborg, but his mind seemed untouched by the intrusion of circuitry. No cold logic tempered that bilious fury. It seemed that Vader lived only to hate, or more aptly, hated to live. "What are you a Lord of, anyway?"

"What?"

"You've been called a lord. I'm a lord of sorts, myself. A Time Lord. Have you heard of us?"

"I have not. I am a Lord of the Sith, apprentice to the Emperor and heir to his rule."

"Sith?" The Doctor frowned. "An Earth word? It means either 'peace' in Scottish or it refers to a big bug in old science-fiction serials. Hardly original. I'd have hoped for something with a little more pep. A little zing."

Vader fell silent again and the lift stopped. The door hissed open and uniformed officers and stormtroopers alike snapped to attention at the sight of Vader. One of them, presumably the senior in rank, strode to face the Sith Lord and resumed his position of ramrod-straight attention.

"Brilliant!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Discipline! Formality! With proper discipline and focus, anything is possible! It gives me great hope that we'll be able to get through this with a minimum of loss of life."

Vader held a hand before the Doctor's face. "I will be happy with a minimum of noise. Report."

"What, me? How can I report when you want me to shut up?"

"Not you."

The officer spared a panicky glance at the Doctor before returning his attention to his commander. "My Lord, there are only twelve of the invaders, but they control the hangar bay. Our weapons cannot penetrate their armor, although to me it seems they have some kind of personal shield generators."

"How do you know this?" Vader demanded.

"There is an absence of scorch marks or any kind of impact trauma to their armor, my Lord, and there is a brief flicker of reddish light around each of them when a blaster bolt strikes them."

The Doctor was impressed. "Very good. They do indeed have shield generators. They can also elevate themselves using repulsors in the bases of their chassis. And they can also override electronics using wireless communications, so I'd suggest…"

Vader had merely to twitch his head toward the Doctor and the Time Lord fell silent. It might just happen that Vader would kill someone other than the Doctor in anger, and the Doctor wanted no such deaths on his conscience. "Cut all power and communications to the hangar bay. Have technicians secure the doors and exits except this one." He pointed to a nearby door. "Disable the hydraulics or weld the doors shut if you must. We will control their means of egress and still provide our troops a means of attack."

"I have already done so, my Lord," the officer said. "We detected someone tampering with the local computer terminals, and the signatures indicated a foreign operating system. It seemed prudent to lock out the bay's terminals. Life support has also been cut to the hangar bay."

"Won't work," the Doctor said, shaking his head. "The Daleks have their own onboard life support. Oxygen, food, the whole lot. I've even seen a few of them moving about on airless asteroids and small moons. May as well leave it on to keep from incapacitating your own people."

The officer was confused. Who was this…civilian…who was standing by Vader's side and giving orders? Evidently one of the Sith Lord's advisors, so it would be best to pay the man respect and attention. Still, it was Vader who was in charge, and the officer knew it. "My Lord?"

Rather than admit that the Doctor had a good point, Vader asked his own questions. "Have you been able to monitor these Daleks' communications?"

"Yes, Lord, but only their verbal ones. It seems they only use wireless methods for manipulating or infiltrating electronics. Shall I open a channel to the hangar bay?"

"Immediately."

The officer strode to a terminal and spoke into a personal comlink. "Restore communications to terminal CB-1319-D only." A moment later, the screen displayed its boot-up status—phenomenally quickly, the Doctor noted with raised eyebrows—and opened an eye upon the darkened hangar bay. The glowing blue "eyes" of the Daleks' sensor stalks were plainly visible. Some were moving about the bay, but four of them remained clustered near the TARDIS, apparently "chatting" among themselves.

Vader took up a position directly before the monitor. "I speak to the intruders aboard my vessel. Send your commanding officer forward so I may speak with him."

"_We have no officers_," a Dalek replied, the two lights on its dome flashing in time with its words. "_I command these units. Identify yourself_."

"You are Daleks," Vader said. "What is your purpose aboard my ship?"

_"You will identify yourself. Identify!"_

Intriguing, Vader thought. The Doctor had indicated that the Daleks were organic inside their armor, but they behaved as if programmed. Much like our cloned troopers were at first. Perhaps they have similar weaknesses.

"_The Daleks will destroy you and your vessel if you do not comply. Identify!_"

"I am the commander of the Star Destroyer _Executor_," Vader answered. "That is all you need to know. What is your purpose aboard this ship? You will be…exterminated if you do not comply." Behind his faceplate, Vader frowned. He could no more detect the Daleks' minds than he could the Doctor's.

"_You are incapable of defeating the Daleks_," the command unit said. It seemed as though it were scoffing. "_We have exterminated thirty-four of your soldiers and sustained no damage to ourselves. We are supreme. We will survive. Surrender your vessel and open its computer cores to us_."

Vader shut off the terminal with a wave of his hand. The Force still worked to manipulate objects, at least. He paused. Why had he not thought of that before? "Give me your device," he ordered the Doctor.

"Which one?"

"The one you showed me in your cell," Vader said tautly. He would not dare make mention of what had happened in that cell, that much was certain.

Reluctantly, the Doctor withdrew it from his pocket and it flew from his hand to Vader's. "Give that back!"

The Dark Lord did so almost negligently, his theory proven. How careless of me, he chastised himself. The Force might not have any effect on the Doctor, but it worked wonderfully against inanimate objects, even those from the Doctor's alien reality. Vader did not know if it would affect the Daleks, but their robotic components were a different matter entirely. In a corner of his mind, a corner slightly less dark than the rest, Vader wondered why that was so. Perhaps because the Doctor was from a universe that existed outside the Force? It would have made an intriguing puzzle for the old Jedi Masters, had Vader and the Emperor not slain them all. But the time for idle speculation was long since past. He strode toward the door, his lightsaber ready for activation.

"Wait!" the Doctor protested, striding forward and putting himself between Vader and the door. "Let me talk with your technicians, the ones in charge of your transiting experiments. I'm sure I can find a way to send them back where they came from and keep more from coming in."

"More or less will not matter," Vader said. "They will be destroyed."

"Didn't you see what happened in there? All your men dead and nothing done to the Daleks in return? You let them loose in here and your entire crew will die! And more might be on their way now!"

"Not until and unless I order them to will my crew die," Vader said. "Commander. Take the Doctor to Engineering and see what he can do with the experiment. These Daleks are a nuisance and I would prefer to have no more of them appearing in my ship, any more so than I would tolerate vermin."

The officer who had greeted them stepped forth. "Right away, my Lord. Doctor? Please follow me."

The Doctor paused momentarily, looking up at Vader. "You may be making a mistake. I hope you know what you're doing, otherwise you'll unleash a terrible evil on your ship."

Vader stared at, or possibly through, the door. "The 'evil' you fear is already unleashed. Your 'Daleks are about to meet him. " A gesture of his black-gloved fist and the door slid open. Dalek eyestalks swiveled to focus on Vader as he strode in, his lightsaber blade shrieking into fiery existence.

The door closed behind him and the Doctor was obliged to follow his escort to the ship's engineering station. A series of lifts conveyed him to a transit car in a tube that ran the longitudinal axis of the ship. The Doctor was not surprised to see that it was waiting for him, evidently reserved for his use. Vader ran a tight ship and anyone who fell down on the job likely wouldn't be getting back up again.

"So," the Doctor began as the car began to move. "Are there refreshments on this tour? Tea would be nice. Or a banana."

-oOo-

Within the hangar bay, Vader walked fearlessly to the Dalek that had spoken to him. "You are intruders aboard my ship. I will give you one final opportunity to surrender yourselves before I destroy you all."

"You make hollow threats," the Dalek leader said. "We are Daleks. We do not surrender: we survive. You will be exterminated."

Though Vader could not sense the Daleks through the Force, he could sense the lack of existence where they were: five vacuums in the Force were moving behind him in an attempt to outflank him. He concentrated, summoning the Dark Side to him as he never had before. Unable to sense the Daleks' intentions to fire, he would be unable to use their thoughts or nerve impulses as indicators of their actions. He would, however, be easily able to sense their weapons bursts as they traveled through the air. It would not grant much lead time between firing and impact, but Vader was strong in the Force, stronger even than the Emperor. He would manage.

"Then by all means proceed," Vader invited. Behind his faceplate, now he was smiling, the anticipatory leer of a predator baring its fangs.

Five Daleks fired simultaneously. Through the Force, Vader felt the energy bursts roaring from the muzzles of the Daleks' weapons, but as the Force flowed through him, Vader felt time slow even as his reaction time increased.

He leaped into the air with barely a grunt of effort, his cybernetic limbs and the power of the Force propelling him several meters off the deck. He flipped backward and landed behind one of the Daleks that had tried to take him from the back. Even as two of the Daleks' energy bolts smashed into their comrades, Vader's lightsaber burned through a Dalek's shields and into the creature inside.

The Dalek's shields provided substantial resistance to Vader's saber. It was much like swinging a regular sword through thin concrete slurry. But the saber still penetrated, and that was all that mattered.

Instantly, the Daleks began screeching alarms and warnings to one another. As Vader's victim fell in two smoking, sparking, oozing pieces, the other two Daleks were trying to recover from their companions' errant shots. Idly, Vader wondered why, if the Daleks were in command of mechanical conveyances, that they still had to communicate verbally. Another weakness? Or the same one? One of the clone troopers' main failings had been an inability to adapt to new circumstances with sufficient speed to counter different threats. Subsequent versions of the clone troopers, as well as more-experienced older model clones, did not have that problem. The Daleks, however, seemed to be reliant on older, purely organic communications, perhaps a holdover from when they were entirely biological. Were the Daleks likewise newly-programmed? Were they as easily confused as the first-generation troopers, or those with insufficient experience?

In the end, it did not matter. Vader had found not only a means of defeating these invaders, but also of venting the tremendous pressures that had been festering within him for many long months. As his feet touched the deck again, his Force-enhanced senses saw the Daleks attempting to regroup and attack, moving as though in slow motion. He leaped again, lightsaber flashing.

In the _Executor_'s engine room, the Doctor gaped. He had seen a lot of impressive sights in over nine hundred years of adventuring, but this…

"Impressed?" the commander asked.

"Only at the gross inefficiency on display here," the Doctor replied. "Your ship is obviously gigantic—I would have said 'titanic' but I have this aversion to icebergs, you see—but it seems you have only found a way to hammer it through space using brute force. You can't be using much more than a third of your engine's power for actual propulsion. How much of it is wasted energy?"

The commander seemed to bristle even as he deflated. "Not enough to worry about. We can still make Point Four easily enough. There is enough energy down there to supply both this ship and half of a good-sized planet."

"Precisely my point," the Doctor said. "If you could run this up to the efficiency I've seen on some other starships…oh, the wonders you could work."

"And how would we do that?"

Abruptly, the Doctor remembered where he was. How stupid could I be, giving technical support to an empire dedicated to death and mayhem? "Work on it," he said, avoiding the commander's question. "Is this what we're here for?"

Without waiting for an answer, the Doctor headed toward the only pieces of equipment that didn't seem to fit with the rest of the department's functions. Donning his glasses again, he pursed his lips and jammed his hands into his pockets. Trans-dimensional tesseracts? What in Time are they trying to do? Photonic acceleration, yes. Gravimetric field modulation, yes. Now this…oh. So that's how they're going about it.

"It works by…"

"By pressing a bunch of buttons, specifically those to initiate power flow; those to target the navigational arrays; a few of those to…oh, no. Not those. My mistake. Those are for coffee. Those buttons, then, to initiate the transit."

"How did you figure all that out?" the commander asked, amazed.

"I can sum it up in two words."

"Uh, 'military intelligence'?"

"No. 'I'm good'," the Doctor corrected. "This isn't so difficult to operate or deduce as it seems, but if we're going to use it to seal off the rift that you opened and keep the Daleks from coming out, we're going to have to get very, very technical."

"How much so?"

"I can't tell you."

"Classified?" Odaron smirked.

"No. Your head may explode. Can you show me the readings of your instruments at the time of your most recent experiments, please?"

The commander waved at a subordinate and relayed the Doctor's request. "I don't suppose it would be out of order if I asked you how you can just walk in here, presumably in that blue space capsule, gain Lord Vader's confidence, and deduce exactly what we're doing, would it?"

"Wouldn't be out of order at all." The Doctor peered intently into the innards of one of the larger modules and began working. While it was quite vital that he seal the rift and keep the Daleks' companions from following, it was also equally important that he do so while he was on the right side of it. And there was another chore that had to be done at the same time, so he figured he might as well be at it.

-oOo-

Four of the Daleks had fallen to Vader's lightsaber, but the other eight were still more than enough to keep him occupied. Quickly, he touched a control on his belt that cut off his external speaker. Another button opened a com channel to his bridge crew.

"Shut off power to this entire deck except for lights and minimal life support," he ordered. "Wherever these Daleks are, shut off power to the decks immediately above and below for a radius of three hundred meters. Do not allow them access to our computers, or to anything of any importance. Deactivate or destroy any compromised systems."

"Understood, Lord Vader," the bridge officer's reply came.

The distance of three hundred meters hadn't been an arbitrary decision; he had been monitoring his own troops' communications as he had fought and he had learned that the _Executor_'s decking served quite well to hamper the Daleks' transmissions. Posts over three hundred meters away seemed unaffected by the intruders' attempted manipulations. Strangely, they continued to speak amongst themselves rather than via radio or subspace. Not that Vader minded, because it made the Daleks supremely easy to track and counter. Vader's Force-enhanced senses pinpointed each Dalek's position even as he sensed the disturbances in the air as their weapon bolts tore through the atmosphere. With the added power and speed that the Force added to his muscles, the Daleks' eventual defeat would not be too far off, he thought.

Then a Dalek energy bolt seared past his left shin. Nerve-shredding pain filled the organic part of his leg and for a moment, he fancied he could still feel pain in his lower leg as he had before Obi-Wan Kenobi had severed it so long ago. Thrown off balance, the Sith Lord stumbled behind the landing gear for an assault shuttle, using the Force to counter the shock of the injury.

At first.

Once the worst of the pain had subsided, Vader changed his focus from suppression to acceptance. As he breathed rapidly through his respirator, he concentrated on the pain, embracing it, feeding it. And the pain became rage, a rage directed at those who had dared inflict such suffering on him. The darkness Vader had summoned grew, swelled into an all-consuming abyss of anger and bile, and he welcomed it. The hatred and the fury fed the Dark Side and in return the Force fueled his body and his mind.

As he once more leaped into the fray, a dim, distant ember of his once-rational mind mused that he had been correct, now more than ever: the Dalek defeat was guaranteed.

-oOo-

The Doctor stood, replacing his sonic screwdriver in his pocket and giving his work a final inspection. "Well, that should take care of everything," he said with satisfaction.

"As in what, specifically?" his escort asked.

"Once I return to my TARDIS and finish the work, the rift will be sealed and the Daleks will no longer be a threat," the Doctor predicted confidently.

"And where will you be?"

"In the TARDIS."

"Will you be rejoining us, I mean?"

The Doctor opened his mouth briefly and bobbed his head in the affirmative. "Maybe."

As the Time Lord began to walk out of the engineering section, the commander who had been accompanying him paused to think. This talk of the Daleks appearing because of some "rift," implying that they came from somewhere else, coupled with the fact that this "Doctor" was the only one who knew anything about them led the officer to surmise that perhaps the Doctor was similarly from "somewhere else." But from where? Another universe? Another time? Or merely another world that the Empire hadn't encountered yet? He shook himself out of his reverie and strode quickly after the Doctor. The commander doubted now that the Doctor was one of Vader's advisors, but was obviously something entirely different, possibly dangerous. Certainly worth watching, in any case.

Hands deeply in his pockets, strutting as nonchalantly as he ever did or could, the Doctor began to trek back to the lift and transports that would return him to his TARDIS and his way home. Behind the manically affable façade of his wide eyes and softly whistling lips, the Doctor was feverishly working to resolve yet another problem that he had just noticed, although this was less technical and more of an ethical dilemma. Oh, for the simplicity of the Master's schemes, he lamented.

The remaining Daleks, all three of them, had discovered that they were unable to open any of the hangar bay doors except the one through which Vader had entered, but even that one was being secured against their use. They had spared the briefest of instants to focus their weapons on the door and simply blasted a Dalek-sized hole through the thick barrier. One by one, they made their way into the corridors and into the midst of the relatively vulnerable human crew and troopers.

"We have gained access to the ship at large," the command Dalek reported. It turned to look at a subordinate. "Disperse and infiltrate. Exterminate all life forms. We must assume command of this vessel immediately, but priority must be given to finding and exterminating the Doctor."

"We obey," the other Dalek replied, taking a separate route into the _Executor_'s corridors. The command Dalek and its companion glided silently into the depths of the ship.

An unholy angel appeared in the hangar's doorway, a crimson rod of murder in its armored fist. Vader's breath came rapidly and raggedly. For all that the Force powered his body, the incredible levels of activity still took a toll on his mortal flesh. Smoke issued from hot armor where Dalek weapons had scored glancing hits. His cloak was tattered and his helmet scorched, but Darth Vader still stood.

It had been wise for the Daleks to flee, he knew. Their odds against the rest of the crew were infinitely better than against him. This way, they could conceivably take over the ship, destroy it, or Force knew what else. If they should happen to tamper with life support, they could easily kill his entire crew. It was even possible that they could hack into the Imperial networks and cause unknowable damage to the Empire.

But he was the Lord Darth Vader. No "Dalek" would get the better of him in this life or the next. Reaching out with his senses, he detected two dead spots in the Force heading to his right and a third to his left, angling to the rear of the ship. Choosing the two Daleks as the greater threat, Vader strode after them,

-oOo-

The transit car neared its destination but stopped several meters shy of it. The Doctor frowned as his escort opened his personal comlink. "Bridge, this is Commander Odaron. Why is my transport stalled?"

"_We apologize, sir, but the Daleks have broken free of the hangar bay. Lord Vader ordered us to shut down all systems within three hundred meters of their position for fear that they might compromise our ship_."

Which meant that one or more of those roving death machines was within three hundred meters of him right now, the Doctor sighed to himself. "Do they know how many are out there?"

"_We count only three left,"_ the bridge crewman replied after Odaron had relayed the question.

Whatever relief the Doctor might have felt at hearing the relatively good news was washed away by a wave of dread. Just what in the name of Time was this Darth Vader that he could slay nine Daleks alone? "Is Lord Vader still alive?"

"_Yes, sir. He is pursuing two Daleks. The third seems to be on your level, heading your way. Relative to your position, he is bearing two two four, moving along corridor 7A-355-8D_."

Odaron hefted his blaster, eyeing it critically. He had seen that the Daleks were impervious to weapons fire, and Lord Vader, the only person on the ship who had a chance of killing the Daleks, was somewhere else. Idly, he wondered how badly death by Dalek would hurt.

"I have a good idea what you're thinking," the Doctor said, getting out of the transit car. "In fact, I've probably wondered much the same thing myself over the years."

Odaron likewise left the car, keeping his blaster in his hand for comfort's sake if nothing else. "I was actually pondering how much pain was involved when you're hit with one of their weapons."

"I know. And like I said, I've pondered it myself." The Doctor palmed his sonic screwdriver yet again. "However, now I'm also pondering a few other things. How do you manage your artificial gravity? Graviton or meson manipulation in the deck plates' molecular makeup, or an actual energy field infusing the decks?"

"Something of both," the commander replied. As it turned out, the deck plating was specially forged with its molecules aligned a certain way and energized by the ship's power source. It was not exactly what the Doctor had been hoping for, but it might work. If he could do what he had to quickly enough.

"Get in touch with your bridge crew," the Doctor said, setting the screwdriver's controls. "See how long they can delay the Dalek by shutting down the doors and such, but make sure they can keep power going to the artificial gravity. That will give us what we need. I think."

"You think?"

"Yes, frequently." Agonizing moments were spent as the Doctor lifted deck plates, fiddled with conduits and connectors, then stood atop the transit car to reroute whatever lay in the ceiling panels. Every so often, he would reach into his pockets and pull out sundry devices that seemed far too large to fit inside them. The unidentifiable devices were then spliced into the circuitry and piping, never to be seen or referenced again.

"_Commander, the Dalek is on the other side of the door immediately to your left_," the bridge technician reported. "_He's attempting to open it, but for now, we're able to keep him busy. I can't say for how long, though, sir_."

"Just for another six to nine seconds," the Doctor reported cheerfully, dropping back down to the deck. "We should be ready by then. Commander, shoot when I say so. Whoever you are on the bridge, deactivate the current to the artificial gravity on this deck and throw full power into the force field projectors that I just found. Why didn't you tell me you had those?" This last was directed to Odaron.

Nonplussed, Odaron ordered the bridge staff to comply with the Doctor's orders, then turned his attention to the lanky alien. "Now what?"

"We open the door," the Doctor smiled. "You'll start shooting, our friends on the bridge will begin flipping switches, and the Dalek will begin blowing up. Well, not in that order. Rather, the door opens, switches are flipped, guns are fired, Dalek is blown up. And somewhere in there we're taking cover before it shoots back. How's that?"

Wondering yet again why an officer in the Imperial Navy was taking orders from a half-crazed civilian, Commander Odaron took up a position behind the transit car and aimed his blaster at the door. He consoled himself with the thought that Vader had put this newcomer in charge—sort of—and concentrated on the slowly opening door before him.

The Dalek's glowing blue central eye showed up clearly in the dimness of the corridor it was leaving, but as unnerving as that steady cold gleam was, the shape of the Dalek was even more so. In the clear light, Odaron could finally see what it was that the Doctor had brought with him. Like so many millions before him, he felt fear at the sight of the Dalek.

A misbegotten blend of biological and mechanical, the cold, emotionless exterior of the Dalek was strictly utilitarian, as fierce and fearless as any land assault vehicle ever was. Its purpose was unmistakable: to destroy. The gun on the unit's left side twitched back and forth as its targeting systems sought new victims; the suction-cup manipulator was retracted, yet it also slowly waved about as if sniffing the air; and the eyestalk efficiently scanned the Dalek's surroundings. Its side skirting, festooned with bumps of unknown purpose, reflected the corridor's lights dully as the once-polished but now tarnished metal sucked the radiance from the lights' glow. The faceless murder machine glided silently into the corridor in which the Doctor and Odaron waited.

Odaron silently keyed his comlink and at that instant, the bridge technicians initiated the Doctor's plan. The artificial gravity directly under the Dalek was cut off, and its repulsors, keyed to keep the Dalek levitated in normal gravity, shoved it toward the roof, rotating and somersaulting as it tried to right itself. The force field projectors snapped on, some acting as miniature tractor beams and others playing about the Dalek's shell, making its shields flare brilliant shades of scarlet.

"Alert! Alert! This unit's mobility impaired! Estimating fifty rels until equilibrium is regained! This unit requires assistance!"

Odaron didn't wait for the Doctor to give him an order. He simply began firing. The Doctor, meanwhile, began reading the tiny display on his sonic screwdriver. Some of the force field projectors were emitting pulses of energy at varying wavelengths and the Doctor needed to know which of them would neutralize the Dalek's shield. It was a simple law of physics that equal and opposite waves would cancel each other, at which point the Dalek would be vulnerable—somewhat—to Odaron's blaster. The question now became one of timing. Would the Doctor be able to find the correct frequency, and if he did, would it be soon enough?

It was. Nearly forty rels from the Dalek's initial distress cry, or just over thirty-five seconds, the scarlet glare of the Dalek's overstressed shields faded. The Doctor quickly dialed the projectors' output to the correct wavelength locked it in place. "Now! Aim for the eyestalk, or for one of the repulsor emitters underneath it!"

The Imperial commander wasted no time asking what was what, but increased his rate of fire, bathing the Dalek in red beams of supercharged plasma. The eyestalk came free of the dome with a flash of sparks and an anguished scream from the thing's vocal emitter. It immediately began broadcasting pleas for assistance mingled with cries of pain.

For all that the Doctor despised the Daleks, he still found himself wishing for another way to defeat them. Hearing the Dalek's suffering still caused him pain of his own. Despite the circuitry and hydraulics that moved the Dalek, it was still an organic being trapped inside, and the Doctor was the cause, however indirectly, of its suffering.

_The lesser of the evils…it always is_, the Doctor lamented. Even as the Dalek began firing wildly, spraying energy beams everywhere in the hopes of killing its attackers, the Doctor pitied it. Odaron's blaster finally found its mark and a red bolt of energy found one of the Dalek's repulsor emitters, overloading it and causing a sizeable explosion.

When the Doctor raised his head over the battered transport car, he saw the last remnants of the Dalek twitching in the ruin of its destroyed chassis. He stood and began to congratulate Odaron, but the words were stilled before they were voiced.

Shrapnel from the exploding Dalek had found Odaron, and the Doctor found himself alone in the corridor.


	3. Of Dimensions and Dilemmas

Of Dimensions and Dilemmas

The Doctor wasted little time in mourning Odaron; there was nothing to be done for him anyway, and there was too much to be accomplished. Still, for however many days the Doctor had left, he would remember Odaron as he would remember Susan, Adric, Sarah-Jane, Jamie, Lethbridge-Stewart, Tegan, and nearly everyone else with whom he had come in contact. Sometimes he felt that such an advanced mind was more of a curse than anything else, especially as it came with such a retentive and detailed memory.

He made his way back to the hangar bay where the TARDIS waited patiently. There were no troopers or officers around; evidently the Imperial troops had—correctly—deduced that the Daleks were an infinitely greater threat than even an unidentified intruder such as he, although the Doctor could be quite a threat, should he so choose. As he stood before the doors of the TARDIS, he paused with the key in the lock, several thoughts running through his brain. With a shake, he cleared his head and entered his ship. It was time now to work. Time enough later to think. It was one thing a Time Lord often had in abundance…

-oOo-

His assisted breathing rasping heavily through his respirator, his armor smoking from several near-misses, Vader stood several meters away from the last surviving Dalek. By Vader's orders, all corridors on their level had been sealed off and power to the doors had been cut. The Dalek was in a cul-de-sac and face to face with a man who had single-handedly slain several of its comrades, but true to its nature, the Dalek showed no fear. Rather, it braced itself for combat.

"Your weapon's energy signature has been identified," it grated as its eyestalk focused on Vader's lightsaber. "I have recalibrated my weapon so that you cannot deflect it as you have done before, and you are too far away to rush me. Surrender your weapon and your ship to me or you will be exterminated."

"It seems the Doctor is not the only one from your universe to suffer from an excess of speech," Vader noted. He deactivated his lightsaber and replaced it at his belt. "However, you will gain control of neither my lightsaber nor my ship. And I do not need my weapons to destroy you."

"That is impossible," the Dalek intoned. "You are powerless now."

Behind his faceplate, Vader's scarred face twisted into a smile. "Please keep thinking so." His right hand reached out toward the Dalek and the creature found itself lifted free of the floor and rotated so that it could not bring its gun arm to bear on Vader.

"Alert! Alert! This unit is being held in a tractor beam! Mobility impaired! Assistance required!"

"Indeed," Vader murmured, drawing on the Force and channeling it through his right hand. He concentrated and clenched his hand into a fist.

The Dalek began shrieking even more than before. "Sensors register extreme compression of exterior casing by unknown forces. Hull in danger of breaching!" The Dalekanium chassis was indeed beginning to creak and warp.

Perhaps the Dalek did, in its last seconds of life, know fear. Its screeching and pleas for assistance indicated pain, certainly, as the machinery was compressed in upon the weak and feeble flesh encased within it. In the end, however, such concerns meant nothing. Even as the Dalek's vital fluids and pulped tissues seeped from the crushed wreck, Vader cast all thought of it aside. Yet one more intruder remained, and it was long past time that he be taken care of. Squelching the pain in what parts of him could still feel it, Vader spun and strode toward the hangar bay.

-oOo-

At the TARDIS' controls, the Doctor feverishly worked to establish a link between its systems and the _Executor_'s computers. At the heart of all computer languages, they were simply binary: current flowed or it did not, on or off, yes or no. But from there the possible evolutions were nearly uncountable. Decimal, hexadecimal, octal, trinary, mo'-Aquibarian—and isn't that just a joy to learn!—and it only went on from there. The trick was trying to figure out what of the myriad possibilities this Empire had chosen to use. From there, it was a simple matter of breaking down firewalls, circumventing anti-intrusion routines, authoring administrative credentials, figuring out which commands would execute the proper programs—which also had to be written on the fly—and not crash the whole system, and then synchronize everything on the _Executor_ with the TARDIS so that everything happened when it was supposed to. All within a timeframe that spanned no more than a few more minutes.

The Doctor's cockeyed smile said it all. This was where he excelled. "All right, old girl," he said softly, caressing the TARDIS' controls. "Let's work some magic."

It had been said before that any science far enough advanced would seem like magic to the uninitiated, but in this case, the TARDIS truly was magic. Bred and built to warp space and time, trained and programmed to take different shapes and provide for their pilots and companions, TARDISes were the pinnacle of Time Lord science. This one, an "obsolete" Type 40, was outmoded and bound for the scrap heap by Time Lord standards, but the Doctor had grown attached to it. Often it seemed as though the TARDIS returned the favor.

After a few agonizing minutes—which still felt like hours, their relativity to dimensions in space notwithstanding—the TARDIS indicated that it had not only matched the _Executor_'s syntax and root structure, but that it had isolated the routines needed to start the transit engines.

"Oh, brilliant!" the Doctor exclaimed. "I don't know what I'd ever do without you!"

Even as his hands began to work the controls and set his plan into motion, the Doctor paused. His initial plan was based on what he had done during the Canary Wharf encounter with the Cybermen and Torchwood: reopen the breach into the Void and suck the Daleks—and himself—back out of this dimension and home again. Unfortunately, he had just realized one gigantic, possibly fatal flaw in his plan.

The _Executor_ was a spaceship, and it was moving through space. The rift through which the Doctor and the Daleks had passed was now hundreds if not thousands of kilometers away. It would be impossible for the Daleks or their remains to be drawn into the Void: they would have to be smashed through the bulkheads of the ship itself.

Worse yet, he had just experienced a dreadful epiphany. His efforts to quash the Daleks in his own universe had met with perpetual failure. Sisyphean, indeed, he mouthed to himself, staring through his monitors at nothing. Nothing I do can stop them. Nothing I can do can even come close. It was as if, unlike the Time Lords and nearly all other races of his home universe, the Daleks were a universal constant, omnipresent and omnivorous, destroying all they touched while being themselves immune to death.

And now the Daleks had invaded this universe. Had the Doctor, however unwittingly, introduced an incurable infection in an otherwise pristine reality? No, I can't have. The freak accident that had thrust the TARDIS into this universe wasn't his fault. It was completely unforeseen. It simply couldn't have been foreseen.

_But I'm the one who continually mucks about with the Daleks. If I hadn't been trying to stop them like I always do, they wouldn't have been firing at me, and this whole mess wouldn't have happened_.

His rational side immediately knew this to be merely overemotional angst, a near-millennium of guilt having piled up in the corners of his mind until there was no place left to hide it. The Doctor's jaw clenched. _But if I didn't—don't—fight the Daleks, who will? No other has done so much or so well as I have, have they?_ No civilization, none of the so-called "Dalek hunters," not even other Time Lords have made so much as a dent. And the Doctor knew that the evil of the Daleks demanded to be faced down and beaten so the rest of the universe could go on.

But it hadn't been defeated, had it? And there was the crux of the dilemma. Undefeated and quite possibly incapable of defeat, the eternal force that was the Daleks had now spread to a universe innocent of their taint and there would be no Doctor to confront it.

But this Vader…he single-handedly killed most of them, the Doctor argued with himself. Surely they can be fought here, perhaps even better than I could have back home. It was true that Vader had slain Daleks by himself, something the Doctor was ever loath to do. It went so deeply against his grain to kill that often the Doctor would go out of his way to formulate alternate strategies if his first plan involved the death of even a mortal enemy. Yet perhaps that was what was needed, he thought, immediately reviled at himself for even entertaining such a horrific thought. Perhaps the Daleks and their murderous ways can only be defeated by murderous men.

It was not the realization of this fact that had shocked him; he had always secretly and fleetingly harbored such speculations. It was the fact that for the briefest of instants, he had contemplated becoming such a man.

He started. For a heartbeat, he had half-fancied that he had seen a reflection of his recently-discovered (or rediscovered) inner demon in a screen facing him, but it was one of the TARDIS' external monitors showing him the entrance to the hangar bay and what loomed within it.

Lord Darth Vader had come calling.

Despite his fondest wishes, the TARDIS was still working on the last snippets of information required. How to stall Vader and keep him from possibly gaining entry into the TARDIS? A man who could kill Daleks was certainly capable of damaging the time capsule if not actually breaching its defenses. Could the Doctor stall him?

Vader's voice came over the external pickups. _"Doctor. I have dispatched the Daleks. Unless you wish me to do the same to you, exit your craft and surrender it and yourself to me. Otherwise, I shall come in and get you myself and extract you piece by piece if need be."_

Not so devious or tactic-conscious as the Master—and certainly never as eloquent—but he does make his point known. Unfortunate that it's always the tip of his sword. "Don't suppose you'd be willing to discuss this?"

_"On my terms, yes. And you are rapidly running out of time to meet them."_

Despite that Vader could not see him, the Doctor crossed his arms defiantly. "And if I elect to remain inside my shielded little safe-hole?"

Vader's lightsaber burst into crimson life and slashed a burning gouge in the exterior of the TARDIS. _"You would not remain inside for long."_

"Don't you dare!" the Doctor exclaimed. Sparks had flown from damaged junction boxes and conduits inside the TARDIS' control room and he fancied he could hear something similar to a scream of pain. Vader had found a most effective way to force the Doctor's hand.

A glance at a monitor showed the TARDIS still diligently at work parsing the last morsels of data before the Doctor could set his plan in motion, taking time in which Vader could easily cripple the TARDIS and strand the Doctor in this bizarre universe. "Let me see if I can't buy us some time," he whispered, gently stroking the TARDIS' central column as it flickered with the firing of billions of mechanical synapses. Shuffling a few items in his pockets with the idle nervous energy of a man about to meet his own doom—again—and the possible deaths of two universes, the unsmiling, somber Doctor left the TARDIS and stood before Darth Vader.

"You rang?" the Time Lord asked.

"Step away from your machine," Vader ordered.

Wordlessly, the Doctor complied, the TARDIS' door closing behind him. "I'm going to assume that this is the part where you demand my surrender. Or did we already do that?"

"Open the door to your ship."

"No."

The lightsaber rose, its tip aimed at the Doctor's face as Vader's feet positioned themselves for a strike. "If I can slay Daleks, one overly talkative 'Time Lord' will pose no challenge. Or do you wish a gallant death to protect the secrets you hold?"

"Oh, I love multiple choice exams," the Doctor said flatly. "I'll take 'D', or four. That's the one where I remind you of the 'armored backside' scenario."

Wasting no more words, Vader drew on the Force and delivered a blindingly swift slash with his lightsaber at the point where he thought the Doctor was. Without the Doctor causing any ripples in the Force, Vader could not predict or influence the Time Lord's movements any more than he could the Daleks'. Still, he had been quite unprepared for the speed of the gangly man's movements.

_They never learn except through the hard way,_ the Doctor sighed, his hands still in his pockets. Slowly, he pulled them out.

Vader barely twitched as his attention shifted to the Doctor's hands; he had expected the Doctor to take out that annoying contrivance that he had first used to disable the Dark Lord's lightsaber, but the man's hands were empty. Behind his faceplate, Vader frowned again as the Doctor raised his hands into a defensive posture. "You jest."

"Never," the Doctor said. "Now do as you must. And so will I." To an onlooker, there would seem to be a hint of sorrow in the Doctor's eyes. Yes, Vader was an enemy who had to be defeated, but the Doctor seemed to pity him, almost to mourn him. For a human being, one of the universe's potentially most brilliant beings, to have fallen from being an engine of life and invention and creation to become this… What forces must have warped and twisted the man so cruelly?

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said. "For whatever has happened to you, I am as sorry as for what will befall you. And I find that I can forgive you, as well."

Now the Sith was cautious. The Doctor was an irritant, no doubt, but he was certainly not insane, his comments aside. He obviously had something planned, but Vader could not guess what it was. He shifted into a more conservative stance and began to circle the Doctor.

The Doctor's large, dark eyes never left Vader's. For all that the Doctor couldn't see Vader's eyes, it seemed to Vader that the alien intruder was staring at—through!—him. It almost made the Sith Lord apprehensive, but what harm could a lone man do to a master of the Dark Side of the Force?

Another lightning-fast slash burned the air as the saber hummed downward. The Doctor stepped inward, recalling lessons learned long ago on Sol II, the world known as Venus. The greatest energy in a swung weapon is in the farthest third from the point around which it revolves. The least power is in the third closest to the point of rotation. He slipped inside almost faster than Vader could follow and gripped the Dark Lord's arm with hands far stronger than any mere human's.

The Doctor twisted his body, wrenched his hands about, and Vader was toppled off-balance. With any other opponent, there would have been a resounding collision with the ground, but Vader's training and inhuman reflexes nearly foiled the Doctor's technique. As it was, he had a few heartbeats wherein his equilibrium was lost, and after those heartbeats, his lightsaber was lost.

Despite having mechanical hands, they were modeled on human hands and were thus susceptible to the same principles of leverage. The Doctor pulled and twisted again, and Vader's lightsaber was yanked free of its owner's hands, deactivated, and stuffed into one of the Doctor's pockets.

"You were told I'd take it away from you again if you misbehaved," the Doctor said softly.

Vader was enraged. With a roar of blind anger, he attacked the Doctor in his own open-handed attacks. The animal fury of the former Anakin Skywalker couldn't be filtered out by his vocal transmitter or hidden by his armor, and indeed, the Doctor felt waves of icy venom washing over him as the punches and kicks rained down upon him.

Most of them he blocked, dodged, or redirected, but a precious few penetrated his defenses and caused a good amount of damage. The Doctor silently reproved himself for assuming Vader to be a base brawler. Obviously an expert swordsman, it stood to reason that he would have empty-hand skills of equal caliber on which to rely. It was a lesson the Doctor learned with not a bit of pain.

One exceptionally savage knee strike smashed the wind out of the Doctor's lungs and sent him to the floor in breathless agony. Only supreme willpower kept him moving and away from a boot that thundered onto the deckplate where his head had been just instants before.

Vader, humiliated by the Doctor and his throws, joint locks, and irritating condescension, was a swirling cauldron of boiling vitriol but a frozen spike of logic managed to lance through his mind. He could not use the Force to manipulate the Doctor, that had been proven already. However…

The Doctor, gasping and groaning in pain, felt his clothing yanked toward his enemy as if they were fine metal filings drawn to a giant electromagnet. Soon enough, he found his jacket being gripped in Vader's fists, the Doctor's feet dangling limply nearly a half meter off the deck.

"This is your final chance," Vader rasped, his mechanical breathing coming fast and hard. From the sounds of his modulated voice, he was speaking through clenched teeth. "Surrender your ship!"

"Not before I knock you flat of your armored backside," the Doctor said weakly. But there was still that sardonic smile on his face. Vader looked down…

…and the Doctor's sonic screwdriver went to work on the breathing apparatus on the Sith Lord's chest. Instantly, his lungs felt starved of air. He was suffocating. The Doctor had shut down his breathing aids. Vader felt his legs giving way and he released the Doctor as he fell.

"No, you're not going to die," the Doctor wheezed, straightening his lapels and pocketing the sonic screwdriver after giving it a quick flip. "But you will slow down quite a bit. I only reconfigured your breathing machine so that you're taking in ten percent of what you need now. I have an affinity for the number 'ten,' for some reason. In time, it will revert to normal. Perhaps one day, you shall, too."

Calmly, yet with one final pitying glance at the feebly struggling Vader, the Doctor entered the TARDIS and sealed the door. This time, he also raised his shields and flipped the switches to engage the programs he and the TARDIS had put together.

The central column in the control console began to rise and fall and in the depths of the _Executor_'s engine room, the transit equipment thrummed to life. The stream of energy that kept the TARDIS' navigation computers locked onto the breach between universes was badly attenuated but still sufficient to give the TARDIS a point on which to focus. Lacking the Daleks' energy beams, the Doctor had to supply a greater proportion of the TARDIS' power to fuel his return, but the massive engines of the _Executor_ provided the lion's share.

The grinding wheeze of the TARDIS' machinery was drowned out in the whine and roar of tortured energies being twisted in ways they were never meant to be. Circuits blew and pipes ruptured all over the TARDIS, but the instruments indicated that the TARDIS and its quirky pilot were transiting the Void…and were through it.

Another series of controls were manipulated and soon enough, it seemed that the breach was sealing itself. By now, the engines of the _Executor_ and its transit equipment—and controls and a good deal of other systems—were burning themselves into harmless slag. It had been all the Doctor could do to stop the Empire's experiments, but he had done it. Whether it would be enough, only Time itself would reveal. Finally, though, safe and secure in his own universe, the Doctor collapsed into a chair and allowed the pain and exhaustion of the last several hours to overwhelm him.

-oOo-

The Sith Lord was standing in silent fury as he contemplated the spot where the TARDIS had simply vanished. He cursed himself, the Doctor, the Daleks, and the universe itself for failing to capture this miraculous alien technology.

Far too late, a squad of stormtroopers came dashing into the bay to aid their commander. Vader strode out of the bay, directly through the squad, which scattered like mice before the lion.

Vader cornered a senior officer. "Collect the remains of those Daleks and take the carcasses to the bio-labs and the mechanical parts to engineering or the science labs. Have them analyzed and reverse-engineer what we can. This incident will not be a total loss." I will not allow it.

_And there is much I can glean from the Daleks and their machines. Perhaps enough to aid me in the search for my son._ In fact, a certain droid design he had sent to Mechis III would likely benefit from such technology…

The Doctor jolted awake when an alarm shrieked through the TARDIS and a blast of something shook it. The Doctor leaped to his feet, still sore, and checked his instruments. The TARDIS had materialized in deep space rather than on some planetary body. It was unusual but not unheard of. Oddly, it seemed that the TARDIS was still not quite in its own universe, even though familiar constellations were visible or could be identified through the star charts onboard. _What? Home, yet not home? How is…?_

Another blast shuddered through the TARDIS. The Doctor saw that the shields, though not at full strength, were sufficient to protect him against even a prolonged bombardment of what the instruments said were simple disruptor charges. A flashing light signaled an incoming communication, likely a challenge.

Instantly, the Doctor responded, activating a monitor for face-to-face dialogue. And what a face it was.

Shaggy, unkempt black hair framed a heavy-browed, wide-nosed visage. Craggy teeth flashed from between a ragged beard and mustache as bushy eyebrows frowned beneath a heavily-ridged forehead. The TARDIS struggled to translate the hostile sounds of the alien's language for a moment before managing to convert it to what the Doctor could understand.

_"…yourself! The shape of your vessel identifies you as one of them, or as one of their lackeys, their drones! Who or what are you? Speak, before we destroy you!"_

An exterior visual on another monitor showed a flight of several starships with designs the Doctor had never seen before: a wedge-shaped primary hull from which depended thin engine pods with a bulbous forward module connected to the main hull by a graceful, long neck. "What?"

Before the Doctor could offer much more than that, the alien pulled back from the screen to reveal what was possibly the bridge of his ship as someone off-screen shouted over blaring alarms. _"They're here! Single ship bearing zero-three-two mark four, dropping to sublight!"_

The Doctor was flabbergasted but tried to reply to the ridge-headed alien anyway. A new, far more powerful communication blasted through space, overwhelming everything on its channel.

_"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."_

The Doctor was speechless. Nearly.

"What?"


End file.
